Submitted by SafariADV on Fri, 2019-11-01
We landed this morning at Johannesburg, South Africa, first we went to get our Dr. Livingstone, our car, from Bushlore where it was to do a check-up and some changes.
It has been a while and we have missed our "beast" so much!
The sense of freedom we experience every time we are on board our Toyota Hilux transformed into a bush camper is impossible to describe; for a month we will go around South Africaand Botswanamostly camping, we can't wait to leave for our itinerary.
But first we will spend, as usual, a few days in Johannesburg to prepare the car, to do the shopping and, why not, to discover something new.
We leave from the Bushlore office and, following our navigator, we head to our hotel, the Premier OR Tambo Hotel; this is the third year in a row that we come here when we are at Johannesburg, it is convenient because it is very close to the airport and has a guarded but open parking lot where we have all the space to fix the car without problems.
We take about half an hour to get to Kempton Park, the area where our hotel is located, on the other hand the metropolitan area of Johannesburg is so extensive that, even if there is not much traffic and bypass, it is a kind of ring road, has 6 lanes at certain points, travel times are never short, we also cannot go too fast because our Dr. Livingstone is heavy.
We arrive at the hotel around 1.00pm, we check in and the room is ready, we also find our Zimbabwean friend who works here and with whom we chatted a little about his beautiful country last year.
We bring the suitcases to the room and go down immediately, it's time for lunch and we have a certain hunger, so we go to the hotel bar and order two Greek salads.
After lunch we are ready to start working, we have to check all the supplies on Dr. Livingstone, yes, because after a year we no longer remember them; this operation is essential to make the shopping list for the trip.
We must also fix all the things we brought down from Milan, both food and a series of items that we will need during the trip and that we will leave here when we go back.
We work for a couple of hours but then it starts to get cold, the sun is going down towards the horizon and the air immediately becomes fresh; we decide to finish here for today and go back to the room, now we have a little clearer idea of what we have to buy tomorrow when we go shopping at Checkers and Outdoor Warehouse.
Even in the room we have work to do, we have to pack our bags for the journey, we have already brought many things to the car, but we have to pack bags with clothes.
For several years we have been using nylon and net bags that are closed with a zipper, they are perfect for dividing and keeping our garments folded, so we can keep everything tidy and not go crazy looking for things when we are on our Dr. Livingstone.
We do not take a long time to do this, now we do it with our eyes closed!
But now the tiredness of the day starts to be felt, so we relax a little; today we worked a lot but we managed to fix everything so tomorrow we just have to fix the shopping.
Tonight we do not have dinner at the hotel but we prefer to go out, nearby is the Emperor Palace, a friend and partner discovered it last year and we liked it very much because, besides having a wide choice of restaurants, it's very kitsch and we like everything kitsch!
We take our Dr. Livingstone and we go, it's less than 10 km away and then we arrive in a short time, the hardest thing here is to park, as always there are so many people but the trick to finding parking is: you have to look for one of the guys who are parking the attendants and go to him, he will look for the parking for us, he will also take care of the car during our stay here, all in exchange for a tip.
The interior of the Emperor Palace is somewhat reminiscent of the Caesar Palace in Las Vegas, although it is undoubtedly smaller, but it has a good offer of restaurants, for all tastes and all budgets; today is Friday evening and there is a lot of people, but we wanted to come here and tomorrow is Saturday and it will certainly be worse!
We take a tour, choose where to dine and then go back to the hotel, today was a busy day so we go to bed early because in the next few days, when we leave Johannesburg, safaris will start, so it's better to take the right time round.
